Eyes the Eagle:

Eyes the Eagle looks at the pictures for clues. Check the first letter of the unknown word and look for images that start with that letter and make sense in the sentence.

Lips the Fish:

Lips the Fish makes just the first sound of the word and then stops to think. Look for clues on the page and think about what could fit there in the sentence that starts with that sound.

Tryin' the Lion:

Tryin' the Lion goes back and checks for context clues that he missed the first time. Go back to the beginning and reread. See if you have new clues that help you after re-reading the whole thing and try it again.

Chunky the Monkey:

Chunky breaks the unknown word into syllables, roots, affixes,or recognizable word parts. He looks for known endings, prefixes, and smaller words inside the bigger word that can help with reading the word.

Flippy the Dolphin:

Flippy switches up the vowel sounds in unknown words to see which one sounds better. He tries both the long and short sound. While it is important to use letter patterns to determine this (silent e after a long vowel, etc), Flippy can help remind students to check for these patterns. Flippy can also be used for letters that have a hard and a soft sound, like C and G.

Skippy the Frog:

Skippy jumps over the unknown word and reads to the end to look for context clues that come after the word. Then, Skippy goes back to the word and tries again. I tell them that Skippy says "skippit" instead of "ribbit".

Stretchy the Snake:

Stretchy helps students blend the sounds in an unknown word by saying each one really slowly. I sometimes have them sustain the sounds like they are singing when using this strategy. That helps students who have a hard time going from sounding out the letters to recognizing the words.